Challenges in Building Very Large Teams

Abstract. When agents coordinate according to the principles of teamwork they can flexibly, robustly and reliably achieve complex goals in complex, dynamic and even hostile environments. An emerging standard for building such teams is via the use of proxies, which encapsulate domain independent coordination algorithms in a software module that works closely with a domain specific agent and other proxies to create a team. While succesful, previous generations of proxies and teamwork algorithms were limited to small teams because of their reliance on accurate models of the team and task state. By developing new algorithms that rely on probabilistic models we have been able to build teams several orders of magnitude larger than before. However, key challenges remain before such teams can be deployed in real-world environments, including the need for languages to specify plans for such teams and ways of modeling and predicting team performance in new domains.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: MMAS
• Authors: Paul Scerri, Katia Sycara-Cyranski
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Domain Specific Agent, Independent Coordination Algorithms, MMAS 2004, Team